So this year I just went on the Saturday....Myself and Karl from the Sheffield Boardgamers set off at 7.30am and got to the Expo for about 9am.
There were a lot of people there - but it was well organised, and it didn't take us long to pick up our tickets and get amongst the gaming goodness. My first stop was the bring and buy sale - which was chaos! - I spent at least an hour queing up to book in my stuff - and about half an hour checking out at the end - that said It was worth it for me, as the money I made selling old games covered the cost of the three new games I bought.... which were:
SANSSOUCI - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/146816/sanssouci
IVOR THE ENGINE - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153238/ivor-the-engine
RISE OF AUGUSTUS - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137297/augustus
I was hoping I would be able to pick up a copy of MACHI KORO at the expo... but I didn't see it... so I've ordered a copy from amazon.... should be here in a couple of weeks! http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro
I also got various meeples, cubes and dice bits for the interesting looking post-apocalypse game AMID THE ASHES which I'm in the middle of making a print & play copy of... when it's done I'll and played I'll post the results up here. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143521/amid-the-ashes
I pre-ordered SANSSOUCI from Gameslore... it's worth noting that if you pre-order stuff from shops that are doing stalls at the expo, you can save money on postage by collecting the games from the stalls (GamesLore & BoardgameGuru were both doing this... and probably others too)...
I spent a couple of hours in the Playtest Zone - which was very interesting... tried out 3 games... 1 was a really nice idea.... one was basically a re-skinning of UNO with orcs and dwarves (!)... and one was a bizzare thing called "GORT WORLD" - the designer seemed to be making the rules up as we played (that's 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back!)
Following that I met up with various folks from the Sheffield Boardgamers to play games.
I eventually got back home in Sheffield about 1am the following morning.
I had a great time - Last year was good, but I went by myself. It was really nice this year, knowing that I could meet up to play games with the other Sheffield gamers. In retrospect I wish I'd gone on the Friday as well this year to get to play more games. Next year I'm going for longer.
